We Have Only Moments
Some of the best advice I have gotten during this whole ordeal is to stay in the moment.
Which is not easy when in the moment, one might be suffering from a yeast infection, neuropathy of fingers and toes, mouth sores coming on like a Mack truck, chemical depression to rival the wildest postpartum atom bombs of emotion, hot flashes from early-onset menopause that make one want to strip naked and run through the woods like a wild animal. Or all of the above, at the same time. Not that I would know anything about that. I mean, I have a friend who might be feeling like that, today.
However hard living in the moment might be when the moment is full of feelings I don’t like, it beats the alternative, which is feeling all of the yuck that the present moment has to offer, as well as fretting about future things that might or might not happen to one’s body or mind or children or life, as well as feeling poignantly, painfully sentimental about the past when everything was Just Great.
Wasn’t it Just Great? Wait, I’m not remembering that quite accurately? Things sucked and hurt and were messy and awful before this day, month, year, this current misery? Go on with you.
Still, if I have to live what feels like the same (chemo) moment over and over again, why can’t it be this one, first frost, taken at Les and Sam’s land a couple of months ago:
Or this one, taken by Steve just before chemo started:
Or even this one, philosophical 8-year-old boy with slug:
Jesus said (I think I’ve quoted him on this already, but it bears repeating), today’s worries are enough for today. Or, adapted for the chemo patient, today’s symptoms are enough for today.
The power of living in the moment, even when the moment sucks, is that when we can really do it, our judgment of the moment as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (which is usually not objective, but based on whether it makes us feel good or bad) can relax, and we see the whole fabric of that moment, we notice all kinds of other things about it, lots of which are beautiful and good, not just because they make us feel good but because there is a grace and loveliness to them all of their own.
I’ve been slowly making my way through Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, a great but dense book that is more or less about that thing Jesus said, from a Buddhist perspective. She amplifies on key points which are important for a perfectionist like me, for someone whose perfectionism is often as much about having the ‘right feelings’ as the right clothes or car or house or whatever. In fact, for me it’s much more often about having the right feelings, words, and relationships than about the material stuff. It’s not a better way to be—not more enlightened, necessarily, just a different addiction.
Pema said this about perfectionism and trying to escape What Is:
“We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who’s awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience.
“Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we’re going to have an experience we can’t control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head, somebody’s going to spill tomato juice all over our white suit.”
[I love how the white suit example comes AFTER cancer and the burning house, as if cancer and house-burning are just building toward the tragedy of stained clothing. That’s so Pema, earthy and all over the place and making so much sense, all at the same time.]
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m also reading “Full Catastrophe Living,” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who teaches mindfulness meditation to all kinds of people at the stress clinic at UMass Amherst. The first chapter of his book is called “You Have Only Moments To Live.” The double-entendre is alarming until it makes you laugh. And it’s a gospel truth.
I’ve been trying to practice the moment-living. And, as I said, I have been pretty good at it, these last six months. I do it because I get anticipatory nausea even walking into Dana Farber, even typing the NAME I hate to say, but I am determined not to let nausea and anxiety have more of me than it deserves. So even when I know that a new round of chemo is coming in a day or two or three, if it pops into my mind I just re-route my thoughts, immediately. I give my easily distractable chemo brain as much of the credit as any incipient mindfulness meditation abilities. Whatever works.
But for some reason, the last few days it has been much harder to stay in the moment. I have four chemo sessions left, which will come two or three weeks apart. That means that between 8 and 11 weeks from tomorrow, infusion will be OVER. FOR EVER, we hope. Of course, the effects will linger. My onc says it will be 6 months before my blood counts return to normal on their own. But no more poison pouring in—I can start detox, getting the poisons out. My last recovery from chemo symptoms will be exactly that, not a mere Sisyphean preparation for a fresh wave of hell.
The problem is, I’m feeling this last 8-11 weeks as a big monolithic chunk of fear and misery. I’m feeling it all Right Now, instead of just feeling the little miseries of today. I’m anxious that because chemotherapy is cumulative, the next chunk of time is going to be worse than anything I’ve been through yet (it might, but then again, it might not). I’m anxious about Christmas not being Christmas (even though I’m a veteran of enough Christmases, both secular and sacred, to know that whatever we do or fail to do, Christmas comes). I’m anxious about falling further and further behind on the things I like to do because I can’t get out of bed and can’t think: cooking, reading, goofing off with my kids (even though in 6 months of chemo there has not been a single cycle in which I didn’t get some respite).
So, instead of pacing myself, as I have been, I am trying to eat the next 2 months whole. I think that is just my way—the old perfectionist way—because I am ‘so close’ to the end I just want to hurry up and finish, and my way of finishing, tying it off, is to feel it all at once, since I can’t do it all at once. As if that helps.
The reality is, I have two infusion-free weeks ahead of me. They might not be hospital-free or fever-free or discomfort-free ones, but why am I going to deny myself the enjoyment that will inevitably percolate in them, because my mind is racing ahead to the weeks that follow?
And the other reality is, those future moments, those last intense weeks of infusion, are all hidden from my eyes. Invisible. Just like a pregnant mother who has no idea who her child is or will be (or who she will be with her child!). Just like a couple standing in front of the minister or rabbi, staring at the future together that is hidden from their eyes. Why would I assume all those moments to be packed with misery and distress, just because they are called marriage, I mean chemotherapy? (Just kidding, Peter Love!)
Maybe I am so focused on them because it’s easier than focusing on the next anxious situation, the less concrete one—when chemo is all done, and it’s me and the invisible workings of my body trolling on into our future, without the reassurance of a team of crack cancer professionals monitoring me weekly for my progress. Ahh. Now we’re getting somewhere. The old anxiety bait-and-switch.
My friend Caroline, who recovered fully from metastatic ovarian cancer earlier this year, and whom I preached about on Easter 2009 because she is such an incredible, radiant, resurrected person, sent me the following note a couple weeks back. It is good advice for me right now, and maybe for you, too, for whatever moment of anxiety, ick, pain, cancer, burning house, white-suit catastophe you find yourself in, and whatever future anxious moments you might be pre-worrying-to-death.
“So I probably gave you a quizzical look when you told me last summer (the time we were at Katrina’s old house) that you just had a strong feeling that I was going to be healthy over the long haul. You may be totally right! I feel amazingly good—so good that, aside from the lymphedema and the hot flashes, I sometimes have a hard time wrapping myself around the fact that I was ever that dangerously sick.
“And I know that some people have to beat the statistical odds, so I’m happy to volunteer for the job! Most of the time, I don’t focus much on the statistics, but they are daunting, and I know that I am already one of the incredibly lucky ones. Even if I had a recurrence tomorrow, I’ve already had so much more time to be cancer-free than many other women in my situation. And I do chalk some of it up to simple luck because, at some level, that seems to be part of what it comes down to.
“That may reveal my theological shallowness, but I don’t know how else to make sense of it. There’s no good reason why I should be here and Patty should not. It’s the two people standing in the field, or the two women grinding meal together. (I was just reading that part of Luke 17, in preparation for preaching this week — it’s curious that the lectionary skips over it.) God has been good to me, and you and so many others have been amazing, and I’ve tried to be as positive and hopeful as I can be, and to take reasonably good care of myself — but I do think I’m also just plain lucky. It sounds as if Patty had all those things and more — she was a healer, for crying out loud! — but her luck ran out.
“I’m not sure what to do with that other than to take it as a reminder, once again, to be grateful for the present moment. I’m sitting at my dining table as I write this, with views of bright red maple leaves out two different windows. They are almost achingly beautiful. You could spend a long life just contemplating such things, and in the end, life would still be too short.”
Moment by moment, loves.
~
A request: Carmen has been having a hard time these last few weeks. Lots of tears. Lots of melting down over (what I perceive is) nothing. Lots of jealousy of her brother, or anyone who gets anything that she doesn’t have. It might be developmental. It might be delayed upset over our family’s situation.
One thing she is jealous of is how much good mail I get. If you are a card-writer, would you consider sending her a card? She doesn’t need gifts—she has MORE than enough, trust me. Just a card will do. She especially loves the musical cards (though they drive me and Peter crazy, but this is about Carmen’s emotional needs for the moment). And pink, of course. Anything pink.
CHEMO VIPS this week:
~Jamila and Eduardo who are having Rafe over for a playdate
~Mamgu who had Rafe for a sleepover and took him to the Harry Potter scavenger hunt at the museum of natural history
~Kaia and Shannon who made us incredible, savory, sweet, seasonal homemade food
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